Monday, June 12, 2017

I traveled to Montpellier France three weeks ago and bought a
prepaid SIM from SFR (France's #2 mobile carrier) for my unlocked iPhone. Montpellier is France's fastest growing city and its 8th largest. Here are the speed test results from
CalSPEED from a test I ran near the Place de la Comedie, pictured below.

As we saw with 3G/HSDPA technology in California, ping times were long,
between 342 and 347 milliseconds, and hampered real-time streaming
capabilities. Granted, my phone was pinging servers on the east and west
coasts of the United States, but if I were using LTE instead of 3G, I
would expect the ping times to be in the range of 150-200 milliseconds for CalSPEED.

This was my first time using a prepaid SIM from a local carrier, and, not knowing how much data to buy in advance, I bought 20 gigabytes. I thought that would be fine for two and a half weeks of exploring the Languedoc area. To my surprise, by the end of my stay I had only used just over 1 gigabyte, and that was with heavy daily usage. Rather than data, it was battery life that ended up being the limiting factor.

Montpellier has a large student population and there are many new cafes catering to them. Pictured below is a sandwich board written in English, tongue-in-cheek.

The writer Rabelais was an ordained monk and practicing physician, and he taught for a few years at the Montpellier medical college, one of France's oldest.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

We're beta testing a new visualization tool for the California Interactive Broadband Map that displays Rounds 6-10 of our mobile field test data. Below are images from the beta site. The graphics are interactive, so you can select different parts of the charts and drill down to more specifics, such as 1XRTT only (shown below).

Friday, January 13, 2017

With the winter holiday season behind us, it’s time to move that
unsold inventory, time to repackage those frozen turkeys as “fire chickens” and
call them “fresh."

Fierce Wireless reported in August last year that T-Mobile was replacing its Binge-On sponsored data service with
something called “T-Mobile
One.” The new service includes unlimited data. However, as with any
unlimited plan, the big question is, “Unlimited data at what speed and quality?”
Unlimited data at 2.5G or 3G speeds is akin to washing your automobile with a
teacup.

As I blogged
last March, T-Mobile’s Binge-On sponsored data plan let you stream music and
video from select content providers without incurring extra data charges, but the
only way to get HD-quality streaming video was by disabling Binge-On, because T-Mobile
throttled video streaming to 480 pixels (also known as “SD” for “standard
definition”).

It’s no surprise that the Binge-On successor, T-Mobile One, by
default only delivers SD quality video. If you want HD quality (720-1080 pixels),
you have to pay $25 extra. The only difference between Binge-On and T-Mobile One
seems to be the latter lets you stream any content (not just T-Mobile’s
preferred providers), and it costs more. Also, just to make sure “unlimited
data” doesn’t give people crazy ideas, T-Mobile limits tethering to 3G speeds
and also says they’ll throttle anyone who streams more than 28 gigabytes per
month (that’s a lot of data, by the way).

Image: Read the fine print!

Read the fine print: “On all T-Mobile plans, during
congestion the top 3% of data users (>28GB/mo.) may notice reduced speeds
until next bill cycle. Video typically streams on smartphone/tablet at DVD
quality (480p). Tethering at Max 3G speeds. Sales tax and regulatory fees
included in monthly service price.”

Here is an updated image of estimated streaming video
quality based on the interpolated spring 2016 field test results. The January
2016 blog post showing estimated streaming video quality using 2015 field test
data is here.

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About Me

Beginning in May 2012, the California Public Utilities Commission began testing mobile broadband performance of the four major providers and reporting on the results. The CPUC tests 1,990 locations twice a year. Tests include throughput (TCP), latency, UDP packet loss, and jitter. With these metrics, we are able to estimate network quality for streaming voice (VoIP), streaming video, and interactive video. The results are available on the CPUC interactive broadband map as well as on the CPUC's website. We also offer both iPhone and Android speed test apps for the public to do crowdsourced testing. Search for "CalSPEED" on iTunes and Google Play. The results are uploaded the California Interactive Broadband map every 24 hours.